Frog Music

Frog Music

"Emma Donoghue's explosive new novel, based on an unsolved murder in 1876 San Francisco. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heatwave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other"--

Promotion info

Frog Music is a wonderfully evocative novel of intrigue and murder from Emma Donoghue, the author of the international bestseller Room, an emotive and powerful novel that was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker and Orange Prizes.

Reviews

'Time and again, Emma Donoghue writes books that are unlike anything I have ever seen before.' Ann Patchett 'Emma Donoghue is one of the great literary ventriloquists of our time. Her imagination is kaleidoscopic. She steps borders and boundaries with great ease and style. In her hands the centuries dissolve, and then they crystallize back again into powerful words on the page.' Colum McCann Emma Donoghue follows her bestseller Room with Frog Music. Set during a smallpox epidemic in San Francisco in 1876 and based on a true story, a burlesque dancer sets out to bring her friend's murderer to justice. -- Hot Books of 2014 Daily Express

Author description

Born in Dublin in 1969 and now living in Canada, Emma Donoghue is a writer of fiction, history, and drama for radio, stage and screen. She is best known for her international bestseller Room, shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes and winner of the Commonwealth (Canada/Caribbean), Rogers Writers' Trust and Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Awards. Her fiction ranges from contemporary (Stir-fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects) to historical (Slammerkin, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Life Mask, The Sealed Letter, Astray) to fairy-tale (Kissing the Witch). For more information, go to www.emmadonoghue.com. Follow Emma on Twitter @EDonoghueWriter